RISEN *

With virtually every other take on the story of Christ having been exhausted the producers of "Risen" aim for originality by making it a kind of biblical detective story and by concentrating on aspects of the tale most biblical pictures don't even touch on and, by and large, they succeed. It begins with the crucifixion and Christ's burial in the tomb. When his body 'mysteriously' disappears, Joseph Fiennes' tribune is given the job of finding out what happened to it, working on the assumption that it has been stolen. Of course, two thousand plus years of Christianity means you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess where any of this is going, so while the film may not be particularly radical at least it's intelligent, turning most of the cliches usually associated with biblical pictures on their head. Not all of them, of course; the writers still can't escape the 'God is Love' sensibility of most of the other stories of Christ while Bartholemew looks and acts like a hippy from a touring production of "Godspell". No "King of Kings" then but no disgrace either. It certainly won't convert non-believers but Christians won't find anything here at which to take offence.